Proud to be nominated for the 2001 Third Semi-Annual Halo Awards
RATING: NC-17 (eventually)
SPOILERS: All seasons of BtVS through "Into The Woods"; general A:TS, up through "Redefinition." Nothing after these two eps has happened. Joyce is still alive; Buffy doesn't know about Spike's crush on her; and Angel definitely hasn't slept with Darla. Oh, and only Giles and Buffy know that Dawn is the Key.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters from BTVS or ANGEL. They're owned by Joss Whedon, MutantEnemy, Sandollar, Kuzui, the WB, Fox, etc.
SUMMARY: Two weeks after Riley's departure, Buffy writes him a letter in which she explains her feelings, a letter she never intends to send. Then Dawn steps in - and things happen.
NOTES: The timeline in this story is a little skewed. The episodes it follows aired in December 2000, but it's taken me so much longer to finish than I'd anticipated (once I decided to expand it into a real story, not just the Letter itself) that it was hard to keep thinking myself back into that time frame. So some references are probably off. Also, my version of events isn't exactly canon all the way, as will become evident.
THANKS: Many, many, *many* thanks to my beta-readers, Anja & Chelle. You're the greatest! Your comments and suggestions, as always, were greatly appreciated. And, Chelle, my special gratitude for thinking up the spell for Anya. Thanks also to Joanna, of the BA Ficshop, who gave me valuable feedback in the early stages of this story.
������ It's been two weeks since you left. �Two weeks since I stood staring up into the night sky, yelling to you while the helicopter slowly climbed higher and higher, with you inside. �Fourteen days since I stood in numb despair watching you fly away from me. �Did you hear me, Riley? Did you hear me shouting your name? �I'd like to think that you didn't, that the roar and beat of the helicopter drowned out my voice - that you weren't just ignoring me. �I know you didn't look back, though. Even from the ground I could see that.
������ It's funny; I'm not sure why I'm even writing this, �cause I know you'll never see it. �For one thing, I have no address to send it to except the Army, and somehow I don't think that addressing it to "Agent Riley Finn, c/o Demon-Infested Village Somewhere in Central America" would get very far. �So this will just lie in my dresser drawer until one day I decide to tear it up and throw it away. �I suppose I'm really writing it more to clear my own mind than anything.
������ You know, I wonder - even if I'd arrived in time to stop you from getting on the �copter, would you have thanked me for it, afterward? �You said you were leaving unless I gave you a reason not to, and I don't know if what I was going to say was a good enough reason to stay.
������ It was because of Xander that I went after you. �He found me not long after you and I had our "talk" that night. �I'd just dusted eight or ten vamps in about thirty seconds - isn't it amazing what anger and adrenaline can do? �They were the vamps running that human buffet you'd been helping to supply. �They tried to ambush me - guess they didn't appreciate my torching their cafeteria. �Oh, yes, one of them was your arm-biting girlfriend. �It gave me a lot of pleasure to watch her explode into dust, and if that sounds bitchy I really don't care.
������ Sorry; where was I? �Oh, yes, Xander. �Apparently Xander had realized something �was wrong between us, so he went after me. �I didn't have a clue that things weren't fine, but Xander saw it. Did everyone know but me? �Because Willow didn't seem all that surprised either when I told her the next morning. �Was it that obvious? �And was I really that blind?
������ Anyway . . . Xander and I also talked that night. �Actually, he did most of the talking - or maybe "lecturing" would be a better word. �I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was all about what a great guy you are, the kind who only comes along once in a lifetime, how you'd always given a hundred percent of yourself and that if there was any chance that I could love you, really love you, I shouldn't let you walk away. �And so I panicked and ran after you.
������ I know he meant it for the best, but now that I've had a little time to think about it and my emotions have calmed, I realize that I let myself get carried away by his words. �It was wrong of me to go after you. �It wouldn't have been fair to you, to stop you from pursuing your own life on the off chance that I might someday be able to love you the way you deserve to be loved. �Because even though Xander got a lot of things wrong, he was right about that part. �You are a wonderful person, Riley, a once in a lifetime catch for any girl. �But I ran after you not because I suddenly realized I couldn't bear to lose you, but because I was afraid I might be losing my best chance at a normal life.
������ Could I ever love you, really love you? �I don't know. �There, that's the honest truth, though it took me way too long to see it. �You told me that night that I never let you in, that I kept you at a distance. �Guess what? �You were right, even though I didn't realize it at the time - or maybe I just didn't want to acknowledge it. �I didn't let you all the way in. �I couldn't.
������ I probably don't even have to tell you why. �It's because of Angel. �Who else? �Xander said I'd been treating you like the rebound guy. �I'm sorry, but that's what you were. �I only wish I'd been able to see it before you got hurt. �God, how I wish that! �Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do, I hope you can believe that. �When I told you that I'd given you my heart, my body and my soul, I thought it was the truth. �It wasn't until later that I understood it was only a partial truth, that there was a portion of myself that I'd unknowingly held back, the part of my heart and soul that belonged to Angel. �That still belong to him.
������ Funny, no one understands about Angel and me. �Xander, Willow, my mother, probably Giles too, all seem to think he was just a first love that ended unhappily. �Something that happens to most people, especially teenagers. �Xander told me I got "burned" by him. �Willow said that the pain I felt over him was "not my friend." �Translation: �It's time to move past the pain and find someone else, Buffy.
������ And you - just what do you think it was? �Because, you know, the things you said that night just stunned me. �You deliberately let yourself get bitten by a vampire because you wanted to try to understand the "power" Dracula and Angel had over me? �I mean - you grouped the two of them together into one category! �That totally boggled my mind. �That's what I meant when I said you didn't understand. �Where do I begin to try to straighten out a misconception that huge?
������ Yes, they're both vampires, but there's absolutely no other comparison between them, either in themselves or their effect on me. �Dracula was into control, and he got off on playing his seductive little mind games. �When he bit me . . . he used some weird kind of mystical hypnotic power that I've never encountered before, although since then I've read that a few vampires do possess it, usually very old ones. �It works; oh yes, it works very well. �Just ask Xander if you don't believe me. "Spider-eating man-bitch" ring any bells with you?
������ But Angel . . . my God, Riley, is that really what you thought my relationship with him was about? �Angel biting me regularly and exerting his thrall over me like Dracula did, or at least some sort of mysterious addictive rush that gave him "power" over me? �Or is that only what you wanted to believe it was?
������ No. �Angel and I loved each other. �Plain and simple. �Well, not really simple, because he's a vampire with a soul and an anti-happiness loophole and I'm the Slayer, but it is the plain truth. �We were in love. �God, we still are, or I am anyway. �I guess I can't really speak for him anymore. �Regardless, there was no enthrallment or "power" involved in our relationship, except the usual type that comes from being in love. �Unlike you and your vampire whores, Riley, Angel drank from me once, and only once, to save his life when he was dying from a poisoned arrow Faith shot him with. �And even then I literally had to force him to do it and he was sick with guilt afterward. �He couldn't control it, you see, and I lost a little too much blood and ended up in the hospital overnight -
������ Never mind, that's not important. �He left me the next night, after we killed the Mayor and stopped his ascension, and I felt like a part of me had died. �It took months before I began to recover - except I only thought I was getting over him. �I understand now that what really happened is that I shut that part off from the rest of me. �I had to. �Can you understand that, Riley?
������ Can you understand that it just hurt too much, that if I hadn't partitioned off the pain it would have overwhelmed me, possibly to the point where I wouldn't have been able to focus while slaying? �And that would have endangered not only me but everyone else. �You see, I'd lost Angel once before - when I sent him to Hell. �Did anyone ever tell you about that? �I know I didn't; I told you as little about Angel as I could get away with. �Xander maybe? �He seems to have spilled the beans about other things, maybe this was one of them. �Well, whatever; you're going to hear it now. �Except, not really, of course.
������ Anyway. �It was after Angel lost his soul, after we made love on my seventeenth birthday and he became evil again. �(I know you know about that.) �Short version, he got tired of taunting and tormenting me as he'd been doing for months and decided to end the world. �So he used his blood to awaken a dormant demon that would suck every living soul into hell when it drew its first breath in centuries. �I went to stop him. �We fought and I stabbed him with a sword just as Acathla, the demon, woke and started to take its first breath. �It worked. �Angel went to hell instead of all of us. �Good triumphed over evil once again. �
������Hooray for me.
������Except that it wasn't Evil Angel I sent to hell. �It was Angel, my Angel, who didn't know where we were and didn't remember anything that he'd done - rather, that the vampire demon had done during the months it had control of his body. �Willow had recast the gypsy curse and returned Angel's soul to his body - again. �Just in time for me to know he was back, to realize that he didn't remember a thing, and to understand that it didn't make a goddamn bit of difference. �Acathla was waking up and the only way to stop him from destroying humanity was with Angel's blood, since that's what was used to wake him.
������So we kissed -
������Sorry, I had to stop for a minute. �We kissed, I told him I loved him and he told me he loved me - and then, without a word of explanation, I ran the sword through his chest and condemned him to suffer the tortures of hell. �Forever, I thought.
������I left town that day. �I think I had some kind of mental breakdown because I don't remember much except crying so hard that my throat ached for days. �Then when I finally ran out of tears, I was sitting on a bus on my way out of town. �I stayed in L.A. for three months, working as a waitress in a sleazy caf�. �I wasn't the Slayer, I wasn't even Buffy. �I was Anne, quiet, workaholic, unsociable, don't-get-near-me Anne. �I might have stayed Anne a lot longer if a teenage runaway from Sunnydale hadn't recognized me and begged me for help in finding her boyfriend. �Surprise, surprise, he'd been captured by demons. �
������Well. �I fixed that problem and realized I couldn't escape my destiny. �So I came back home and tried to resume my life and stop imagining the tortures Angel was going through down in the demon dimension we call hell. �They don't like vampires very much down there, did you know that? �Something to do with them being "contaminated" because they have human bodies. �So the tortures designed for vampires are even more imaginative than the usual kind. �I wonder what they thought up for a vampire with not only a human body but a human soul?
������I even started dating again, a nice normal boy from school named Scott. �A story I won't bore you with except to say that it didn't work out, which might have had something to do with the fact that Angel returned right in the middle of it. �Why and how he escaped or was set free from hell, I still don't know. �If Angel does he's never said. But there he was, turning my world upside down again, though of course I was glad he wasn't still suffering in hell.
������At first we tried to stay apart. �Then we tried to just be friends - but it was hopeless. �I remember Spike telling us one night that we'd be in love until we died, or until it killed us. �I'm starting to believe he was right, at least as far as I'm concerned. God, it was so wonderful being with him again - and it hurt so much, knowing we could never again take the final step to fully express our love. �And I've gone into a lot more detail here than I intended to. �But do you understand why losing him a second time, only a year later, almost killed me? �What made it even harder was that he left voluntarily, because he wanted me to have a normal life - something which, to be fair, I'd wanted and fought for ever since being Called as the Slayer.
������Have you ever noticed how if you get hit over the head with something often enough, it eventually sinks in? �I think I've finally gotten the message that I'll never have a "normal" life. �You showed me that. �And maybe it's for the best. �Maybe once I finally accept that normality and Buffy can't coexist, I'll be able to concentrate on becoming the best Slayer possible. �And just maybe I'll live to see my twenty-sixth birthday. �God, I never thought I'd start sounding like Kendra. �Poor Kendra. �I told you about her, didn't I? �Drusilla killed her. �She missed out on so much, but she was right about Slaying not being just a job, but who we are. �Who I am. �It's time I focused on that instead of trying to be "normal," whatever that may be.
������You know, it's a good thing you'll never read this. �Somehow I don't think you'd appreciate how much of it is about Angel instead of you. �But then, you see, so much in our relationship always was about Angel, about how much I wasn't thinking about him and how much I'd gotten over him, only I was too - I don't know, dense? �Stubborn? Stupid?
������Anyway, I didn't recognize it in time. �I gave you all I could, Riley; I really did, and I'm sorry it wasn't enough. �You were my link to normality, someone who knew what I am and loved me anyway, someone I could count on for backup and encouragement . . . someone I cared for but who I thought could never hurt me the way Angel had.
������And I was right, because even though I've cried because you're gone and feel a pang every time I automatically think, "I've got to call Riley about this," only to remember you're not here anymore, I know I'll get over it. �That sounds harsh, doesn't it? I do miss you, you know. �I miss your smile and the warmth of your body in bed at night and the comfort of your arms when I'm feeling down and the light in your eyes when you look at me. �But that isn't love, that's companionship and caring and lots of other things . . . but not love, at least not the kind you want and deserve to have. �I'm sorry.
������I'm sorry that I couldn't give you what you needed; sorry that I didn't realize I was hurting you. �Most of all I'm sorry for acting like such a bitch during our last conversation. �You kept trying to explain but I got defensive and angry and wouldn't listen, just kept attacking you with my words. �I'm sorry; I get like that when I'm angry or upset. �The words just burst out and I say things I always regret later. �Even with - never mind. �I always regret it.
������ Of course, to be fair to me, I did warn you that I wasn't ready to talk to you yet, and you were the one who insisted on it. �
������Well . . . I guess that's it. �I hope you find what you're looking for, Riley. �You deserve it. �Please try to keep yourself safe. �I guess it's silly to even write down those words, because you'll never see this. �Even if I had an address to send it to, I wouldn't, not now - but it makes me feel better to put it down in black and white.
������All right, Buffy, it's bad enough you talk to yourself, now you're writing to yourself. Way past time to stop, don't you think?